


All The Stars, Closer

by KriegsaffeNo9



Category: Little Witch Academia
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Break Up, Chariox Week 2018, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, F/F, First Meetings, Reconciliation, Self-Harm, Swearing, fight scene!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-08-02 11:16:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16304159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KriegsaffeNo9/pseuds/KriegsaffeNo9
Summary: Seven days of Chariot and Croix.Better live your lifeWe were running out of timeDay 1: The lilac girl and the revolutionary.Day 2: One date idea turns into another.Day 3: Long days lead to long nights and a cruel dalliance with a demon lover.Day 4: An innocent monster fight conceals grim portents.Day 5: The last minutes of a romance.Day 6: We are the dead.Day 7: One last chance.





	1. At Doom's Gate

That fateful day at lunch, Chariot took a seat next to the girl from the Violet Femmes coven. Competition between the covens was vicious this year; roommates stuck to their own and treated any opposing color with intense suspicion. It was Prof. Allsorts's idea, something to bring out the competitive nature of the young in "today's post-9/11 world." Chariot thought that splitting people up based on color had historically proven to be a super dumb idea and today would be her first strike back at it.

"Hello!" she said, smiling.

"What the hell are you staring at?" the lilac-haired girl said. She didn't even look up at her; her gaze was fixed on a book she was reading, one with a garishly abstract color.

That put Chariot off her game. "A witch can't be friendly to a witch nowadays?"

"Oh, you didn't get the reference. Eh, sorry. You gonna eat or something? I just finished up." There was a Clif bar wrapper near her, and a bottle of Jolt.

Chariot took a seat next to her and dug into her lunch in silence while the lilac-haired girl read away. Chariot would be lying if she told anyone she hadn't want to chat this girl up since she first laid eyes on her at student initiation. She was always carrying books that weren't tomes but were big as tomes. This was the first exception Chariot had seen; it looked practically mundane.

"Might I ask what you're reading?" Chariot said.

"Masters of Doom," the lady said. "It's cool."

"Doom--as in necromancy?" Chariot said, teasingly. "Conjuration? Dalliance with one of the Million Favored Ones~?"

"As in the vid--you know what a video game is, right?"

"Yes?" Chariot said.

"Well," the lady said, "Doom is the greatest video game of all time, pound for pound. The only game that comes near is Half-Life 2, and Doom had a headstart."

Chariot blinked at her.

"Walkin' Dude's bootheel, you seriously didn't understand any of that, did you?" the girl said.

"I didn't really play video games growing up," Chariot said. "A few times at a friend's house, a couple times at arcades."

"You poor bastard. I'll have to show you something later." She traced a mage sign into the current page and tossed the book at Chariot; she snatched it out of the air with her left hand. "Oh, hey, nice reflexes, _tette di zucchero_."

"I am a machine of reflexes, _fille lilas_."

"Ooh, that's a neat trick you do with your tongue. The--the flicking thing."

"Francais is a sibillant language. Why else do they call it a French kiss?" And so she went both barrels and prayed for a hit.

A smirk carved across the lilac-haired girl's face. "I like you. What's your name?"

"Chariot du Nord."

"Croix Merides." Croix held out her hand. Croix shook it. "So you don't play video games. Meet me up at the library tonight, say, eight. There's a place the library ghoul doesn't pay attention. I like to hole up there to stay away from my stupid fucking roommates."

The F bomb startled Chariot. "That's a mouth on you."

"French girls ain't the only ones who know how to use their mouths. I'll put you in front of Doom and see how you can use yours to scream." Croix took her Jolt bottle, finishing it off with a swig, and stuffed her Clif wrapper into her pocket. "See you, Chairy. I'm expecting that book back when you're done."

"Of course," Chariot said, smiling. "I needed something to read anyway."

"Always. Better than Twilight, anyway."

"...Isn't that the Night Fall ripoff?"

"The first hundred Night Fall books are in the public domain, that Mormon chick is untouchable. It's a fucking racket, copyright law. I got half a mind to screw with it myself."

It crossed both their minds that they had stood here--Croix standing, anyway, half out of her seat, Chariot seated where she was, looking up at her--for rather longer than necessary. They had a meeting place, after all. They could save words and time for later.

Maybe even then they knew they had less time than either of them anticipated.

For her part, Chariot remembered it more vaguely: that Croix swore impressively and had a dorky swagger that won her over in an instant. But in Croix's mind that first meeting was always fresh, hot, and stinging, like a drop of sweet poison on her tongue. The longer she tasted it, the more it hurt; and sometimes all she wanted to do was hurt.

"See you, Chairy," Croix said again.

" _Au revoir,_ " said Chariot.

The world changed forever.  
  



	2. Pathways into Darkness

It was a few minutes to midnight. The only teachers awake were the kind to not care about students sneaking out after lights-out. With that in mind Chariot walked without making an effort to sneak, speeding through the halls 'til she reached the courtyard with the statue of Gorgo-Mormo, Thousand-Faced Moon, her three aspects hand in hand around a pillar representing the long-vanished World Tree. Croix was seated on a rolled-out towel, typing furiously on her laptop.

"Hey," Chariot said, stepping up to her.

"Awesome," Croix said, hopping to her feet with her lappy precariously balanced in her hand. "You ready for tonight's _random errands_?"

"You made a voice," Chariot said. "That means you're doing a reference, right?"

" _Better believe it, soldier_ ," Croix said, giving her a playful slug in the arm. "You brought your wand and all that power you got from the Fountain of Polaris, right?"

"Er, about that..."

"What about it?" Croix said.

"I... well, it... it showed me things. But it didn't give me anything yet. I'm not worthy."

"Of cour--why, though? You went there and it didn't do its thing?"

"I need to grow as a person, as a witch, before it unlocks my potential."

"Well, that's... that's great. Convenient. Nobody ever told those old dead bitches about things just doing what they're supposed to do?"

"It's not that simple," Chariot said.

"I--I guess. Ugh." She sat back down. "Well, that's gonna make tonight a little harder on us."

"Why?" Chariot said.

"We're going to summon a fucking shoggoth," Croix said, a manic smile spreading across her face.

Chariot sputtered. "Wh--no, we're not. Is that even possible for two student witches? If it is, why? That's like jumping in front of a cannon and daring it to fire."

"'Cause it's the future, man!" Croix turned her laptop around; lines of text seethed on some proprietary document-reader program. "Utility fog is the logical endpoint of portable technology. Something that does everything. The crinoids figured it out, the Cult of the Skull figured it out, the Deep Ones figured it out..."

"Yeah. The crinoids were eaten alive by the shoggoths, the Cult of the Skull commit a bunch of crimes against humanity, witches included, and the Deep Ones are the Chosen Ones of the Sleeping Priest. You wanna end up like any of them?"

Croix's smirk ebbed. "Well... not the first. You sayin' you don't wanna be a chosen one all of a sudden?"

"Er... I wouldn't say no." She took a seat next to Croix.

"Nobody would."

"But I'm not sure how good I'd be, for one. And for another..." She sighed. "I don't wanna talk about the, the morality of owning a monster right now. How about we--is it alright if we shelve shoggoth-calling? For tonight, at least?"

Croix huffed. "Alright. What do you suggest we do instead?"

"It's dark, we're alone..." Chariot smiled. "There's not a lot we can't do."

"I like a girl who strongly implies on the first date."

"B--no, this isn't..."

"It can be." Croix closed the document on her computer--it made a gasping noise and a sagging noise, like something being strangled in latex. She typed a few keyboard commands and the screen went black. Paragraphs of text filled the screen.

"You've waited until the last minute again..." Chariot read aloud. It was a game called The Lurking Horror, apparently, and it ended with a blinking cursor next to a less-than symbol. "What is this?"

"Well, there's a whiz-bang computer and a hacker," Croix said, putting the laptop in her lap. "What do you wanna mess with first?"

"Hrrm..."

The two played The Lurking Horror for an embarrassingly long time. They moved from the lawn to the student union, quiet and dark save for the eternal chair fire that Chariot had yet to receive an explanation for. It was warm, though, and the night had acquired an uncharacteristically early chill, and so the two traded the laptop back and forth, playing by firelight and reading the text as dramatically as possible. When Croix minimized the game to look up the Invisiclues online, Chariot saw the time at last.

"We've been--it's two in the morning?!"

"Time really gets away from you when you're Infocom-ing," Croix said.

"At least it's Saturday morning," Chariot said.

"Yeah. If we stay awake, we can catch Saturday Showd... fuck, they canceled that." She punched her thigh. "Goddamn, why can't we get Saturday morning cartoons like in the US? Those bastards don't know how good they've got it."

Chariot patted her on the back. "There, there. I'm sure there's some stupid thing we can distract ourselves with."

"Yeah... yeah." Croix sighed. "I think I've got some downloads of old cartoons on one of my other computers..."

"How many of those do you have?"

"Lots."

"Neat."

The two young women looked each other in the eye. Silence spoke for them.

"So this was a date, yeah?" Croix said.

"It was."

"Do I get a kiss?"

Chariot leaned over and brushed her soft lips against Croix's scratchy, dry mouth.

Croix felt like she'd pressed her lips to the fire. Chariot felt a rush of sensation, like a wash of dopamine.

"Alright," Croix said. "Let's do this two more times so we can French it up."

"Keep up the pace and we'll have three dates in no time," Chariot said, smiling wryly.

Croix kept it up.


	3. First, Our Pleasures Die

It was nearly three in the morning, so Chariot turned the handle on their hotel room's door as slowly as she could without the lock re-engaging. She opened the door a crack, just enough to squeeze through--her hat pressed flat against her chest, the peak blocking her vision--and caught the door and set it back shut with the softest of clicking sounds. The light was on; she edged past the bathroom and saw Croix lying on the bed in a boneless sprawl, eyes open. After a moment, she tilted her head towards her and smiled back.

"Hey, sugar tits," Croix said with some effort.

"Morning, _fille lilas_. I'd come over to kiss you but I'm sweaty and disgusting."

"Hey, some people are into that." Croix tilted her glasses up over her eyebrows. "But I'm not. So get your ass clean and then we'll cuddle."

"Of course," Chariot said, and padded into the bathroom, stripping out of her stage costume at last.

The London show was the last part of their European tour, and it was good to be done. As much as she loved to perform, it was hard work, especially for Croix. Like now: Croix's abrasive jokes and names tapered off within a few months of their meeting each other, only to return in force once Shiny Chariot got off the ground. Of course, Croix traded sleep for doing as much business for Chariot as she could manage in a day, leaving Chariot free to practice, perform, and stress-test the Shiny Rod. She was entitled to a little abrasiveness, as long as she was kind when it counted.

Croix listened to Chariot turn on the shower. She had wanted a bigger room--there was one with a hot tub, for instance--but Chariot said she had been fancied out and figured they could save a little money by staying small. Croix smiled and said yes.

She had only relinquished control of the event at eleven, when Chariot's show had finally finished after the second encore, and returned home to juggle every piece of aftercare: pay stubs for the roadies, gate and PPV intake, plans and reservations for the next leg of tours next year. And of course reading the comments and critiques of the tour and deciding where to go from there.  
It had been one o'clock when she finished up, and she had rewarded her patience by smoking some of the heroin she'd taken for the tour. She had budgeted two hits a week and had managed with only one. Stretch it out enough, she read, and the body doesn't develop a dependence. She went months without taking any, she reasoned; once every three or four days after running her body and mind ragged wouldn't hook her.

She had nodded off an hour ago. Chariot wasn't as sneaky as she thought she was; why would she be? She was the chosen one who had taken the power of the Claoimh Solais and turned it towards performing on-stage for the entertainment of mortal men.

No, Croix wasn't bitter.

Okay, Croix was _extremely_ bitter. Chariot was exciting once; full of energy, full of drive, willing to follow her even when the going got scary. When she obtained the Claoimh Solais, Croix thought they were going to change the world. Maybe, at least, get themselves a shoggoth at last. But Chariot wanted to make people happy. She wanted to make magic accessible, fun, bright. It was too eldritch, she said.

_Well, fuck you, bitch, eldritch is what we do._

Croix groaned and pressed a pillow over her face.

Straighten up, idiot. That's your meal ticket you're dissing. So what if she's a moron who likes shaking her tits for the crowd? She'll bring you money and contact-high fame and drugs and research opportunities.

And you love her. Remember that.

Chariot sang in the shower, her melodic voice muffled by walls and high-pressure water. And still it was beautiful.

Croix breathed--maybe she'd had too much, breathing took a little more effort than was probably good for her. Probably shouldn't try to sleep, then. (They had a day in London before they had to go home. She could kill a day. Call it relief. Call it celebration. Call it anything but making sure she wasn't going to die.)

She pushed herself up into a seated position, back against the mysteriously freezing backboard. That focused her; kept her awake. There.

Chariot stepped out of the shower some minutes later, wearing one of her own towels. "Hey there," she said. "My ass is now officially clean."

Croix raised an eyebrow.

Chariot giggled. "Well, I'm not sure if I wanted to give you an idea..."

"How's about we put on some PPV porn and see where we go from there?'

"That sounds just fine by me."

Within five minutes of starting something with an overly-descriptive title, Chariot was asleep, curled against her lover under the sheets. Croix watched but didn't really pay attention; the screen was moving colors, most of it in flesh tones, and it may as well have been an abstract screensaver. Her hand was on Chariot's red head, her soft, wavy locks plush to her sensitive palm. It was something she had affirmed for her every time she saw Chariot perform, but here, in the dim light together, Croix had the opportunity to realize anew that Chariot was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen, effortlessly graceful even in repose.  She felt warmer and safer just by lying next to her.  So what if she's an idiot?  She was her idiot.

_I love you,_ Croix thought.

And for a time, it was true.


	4. The Passions

Halloween was not a religious holiday for witches--that's a common misconception--but it was for ghouls, in veneration of Mordiggian. Mordiggian was technically one of the witchgods, but as the witches worshiped Gorgo-Mormo above all others, and the Thousand-Faced Moon, Our Mothers of Sighs, Tears, and Darkness, was an opponent to the Rot Lord, Eater of the Dead, To Whom All Souls Belong.

And that was why in the late afternoon of October 31st a cadre of masked ghouls were gathered on the Luna Nova lawn, chanting hymns to the inevitability of death.

"So we're gonna kill 'em all," Croix said, looking down on them from her perch two stories up. She bounced a bundle of her little sticky cube-drones into the air; they hovered against the pull of gravity before falling back into her fingers.

"I would hate for it to turn violent," Headmistress Holbrooke said, looking at her steaming tea. "But it would also do no good to have them bringing down the Halloween party tonight."

"I promise," Chariot said, holding the Shiny Rod to her chest, "I won't escalate unless it's necessary."

"Sure," Croix said.

"Thank you kindly. I hope you understand I hesitate to--"

"Whatever," Croix said, hopping off the balcony. Her constructs glided below her feet, arresting her fall; Chariot landed on the grass behind her a few moments later, her superhuman strength and durability absorbing the fall in a way the frail, merely-human Croix could only dream of.

Not that Croix was...

Croix was so bitter it did not necessitate recapitulation.

"You ready?" she said.

"As I'll ever be," Chariot said. "I don't think these guys will settle for my autograph."

"Ha ha ha. Ha ha." Croix stepped forward. "Leave the negotiation to your manager, babe." She made certain arcane gestures and her cuboid familiars swarmed her body, forming rigid plates and striking limbs over her uniform. "Hey!" she said, pointing at the tallest ghoul in the pack. "I'm callin' you out, rotter. Get the hell off my lawn or I'm escorting you off."

"Real diplomatic there," Chariot grumbled.

The ghoul-pack were all dressed identically: gigantic silver-painted skull masks that made them look like rhinestone bobbleheads, voluminous purple robes that looked actively detrimental to movement, and fingerless gloves that gave away that most of them were well past human. The lead ghoul stepped forward, lowering the boom box he held above his head. "Defier of death, we shall depart these grounds on satisfaction of our demands and no sooner. In our enduring ways we are endlessly patient."

"What are these demands?" Chariot said before Croix could flip them off.

"One," the ghoul said, "surrender your youngest witch on the premises and we shall dispose of them."

"...that sounds bad from our human perspective," Chariot said. "What do you mean by 'dispose?'"

"We will kill them, bury them, dig them up in a week or so when they are tender, and eat them."

"Okay, that's gonna be 'no,'" Chariot said. "Will you accept anything else?"

"You, bearer of the Brand Sword, forsake the Moon-Hound and consecrate your blade in the name of Mordiggian, that its edge strike only for Death."

"Naw, come on," Croix said, "let's be diplomatic about this, Chairy. We don't wanna fuck these guys up that bad, do we?"

Chariot sighed. "Alright." She pronounced the second Word: " _Phaidoari Afairynghor_!" She lunged for the pack master, swinging the Claomh Solais overhead; it transformed into a massive, ornate greatsword, the consecrated blade slicing through boombox, skull mask, ghoul skull, and ghoulbody with the effort it took to split a brittle log. She brought the greatsword overhead, blade edged at a downward angle. "Who wants to follow him?"

The two dozen undead sprang at her; Croix stepped forward spraying them with searing mana bolts from her familiar-armor, the impact knocking some out of the air and directing others away from Chariot. Those who pressed the attack were well within her ability to hew in twos and threes.

Croix ran in, jumping into the air and landing a power-fist-emboldened punch directly onto the skull-mask of one of the ghouls. The mask cracked and fell apart, revealing the truly ghastly viasge underneath. Croix stared in shock, giving the ghoul plenty of time to shriek in her face and then try to claw it off. The fuel spirits redistributed themselves, forming a mask moments before the ghoul struck true; the blow sent her reeling away with three deep gouges across her cheek, but she got to keep her face.

Then it punched her in the back of the head and even with some emergency padding she blacked out for several precious seconds, waking up on the ground with the ghoul trying to gnaw through a fuel spirit gorget protecting her throat. She couldn't breathe, and she couldn't manage enough leverage to punch the monster off of her, and so she realized that it was ending here, suffocated while her so-called girlfriend--

\--jammed the Shiny Sprinkler into the ghoul's back and activated it, grinding the monster into shimmering mummy dust. "Are you alright?!" Chariot said.

"I think he's dead, Chairy," Croix croaked, reaching out her hand. Chariot helped her to her feet. "I think--oh, shit!" She aimed her gauntleted hand, rerouted every spare drop of mana to its cannons, and fired full-bore at a ghoul slouching towards Chariot with a sword in hand.

"Oh--right. There's a few more to go," Chariot said. She swung the Rod in its grappling-hook form at the last few ghouls, swung them over her head and smashed them into the ground; Croix issued a command word and her fuel spirits seethed off her body, bundled together in the air, and formed a bloated draconic figure that belched shrieking flame at the trapped living dead things.

Croix turned back to Holbrooke. "We're done here!" she shouted.

"Pardon, Miss Merides?!" Holbrooke shouted back.

Chariot waved the Shiny Rod over her head, the word "VICTORY!" appearing in sparkling letters like suspended fireworks.

"Ah, wonderful! You've done well by Mother Mormo tonight, girls! Have a good Halloween, rest up."

"Sure," Croix said, rotating the fuel spirits into her personal inventory dimension. "Well, that was fun, if brief."

"You were out for a minute of it," Chariot said. "We should take you to the nurse."

"Nurse Camisole? She's a pushover. Two ibuprofen and a pat on the back. I ha... I can walk it off. It's no problem." She waved her off. She didn't need to know. (And Croix didn't need to think about it. I mean, she needed It now--juggling a job, school, and the future of magic energy sources took a toll on her body that It could set right. One day she could set The Junk down, but now was not the time. Not when she knew It worked when so much in her life was at best flighty and temperamental.)

"Here, at least let me heal you up." She held the Shiny Rod between herself and Croix and brought Croix in for a hug. " _Lyonne,_ " she said, and healing light poured into Croix, soothing her throat and caressing away the scratch.

Croix let it happen. It didn't feel great, just--well, if The Junk was like a kiss from the Black Goat, with tongue, this was like warm milk and happy thoughts. "Thanks, Chairy."

"Anytime," Chariot said, and gave her a cautious kiss.

Croix wasn't herself. Her nerdy energy had ebbed over the course of the year, reaching its nadir during the last tour. Now there were times Chariot worried that she was working herself ragged for Shiny's sake--she had taken to thinking about Shiny Chariot separate from herself, an identity made by the two of them and going onto stage like her and Croix's scantily-clad egregore-baby. Croix certainly cared for her like an overly-protective parent, micromanaging appearances, vetting reams of tie-in material and merchandise to help The Brand grow.

It worried her. The kiss was cautious because she wasn't sure who she was kissing, the Croix she'd fallen in love with, or the sad, angry, sleepy Croix that had gradually stepped into her lover's place.

"Hey," she said. "How about we skip the school party?"

"Flagg's eyes, that's a magical idea," Croix said. "Where to, then? Your room? Mine? The machine shop? The library? Ooh, the forest?"

* * *

  
The shrine of Mormo in the Full Moon Tower. The moon hung low in the early evening sky, shining sweetly in the consecrated place. The light of the Triple Goddess was warm as a sunbeam in the bitter chill of this night.

Croix shifted uncomfortably as they stood in the Presence. "So. Are we gonna start praying? Sacrificing?"

"I was just thinking... we could be here a little while," Chariot said, taking a seat on the stone floor, unnaturally warm in Mormo's light. "I've been feeling out of sorts. Maybe reconnecting with the god of our mothers would be..." She struggled for the right word.

"Whatever," Croix said, joining her. "Nice place to get a nap in, at least."

"Please don't nap," Chariot said, resting her head on Croix's shoulder. "You've been sleeping too much lately."

"Can't argue with that," Croix said. "Suppose we could talk about something."

[They didn't.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qleGP0sN_mE)

They stayed in each other's company and under the light of Mormo 'til the goddess's light passed from the window; they returned to Chariot's dormitory then, eating candy that Croix's fuel spirits had collected for them, and then, and only then, did they talk about the upcoming tour.

They were both excited about Japan.


	5. Where Does Love Go...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...when it's gone?

The blush welled behind Croix's mask. This was the best part; she raised her head, she stroked the Shiny Mixer's console, and she pressed her favorite button, and the bass dropped and the beat kicked into gear and all around her the dance surged forward into the next dimension of physical delight.

Behind the mask, she wasn't Croix Merides. She wasn't a recuperating drug addict with a dead mother and a sick father. She was XLR8 2MAR.0, cyborg DJ from all tomorrow's yesterdays, and she was a maker of divine music.

Not far away, Chariot du Nord, her manager slash friend slash confidante slash girlfriend, waited in the wings, watching and listening and nodding only gently. Flamboyant, but reserved and intellectual, she let her stunning beauty and fashion sense do the talking as she arranged for the most striking venues in the most hip cities in the world to host the world's greatest rising musician.

Little did Croix know that Chariot was growing stifled by Croix's minimalism and refusal to expose herself to the spotlight; she needed to make it big. All she had to do was conceive of a plan to get a little more mana into the Shiny Rod.

What was a prime source of mana... why, emotion, of course. Powerful emotion was free from the bondage of higher thought, the wine of the witchgods, if blood be their bread. If she could wring the emotion from her audience--

Ah, to be XLR8 2MAR.0, blissfully unaware of her lover's impending and rank betrayal--

* * *

  
Croix nodded awake. "Huh...?"

Chariot was looming over her, smiling weakly, dressed in that slutty costume that Croix grew increasingly resentful of the more men she saw in the audience (and as the audience grew there were always more men under the distinct impression they had anything like a chance, judging by their insistent eye-banging of her girlfriend.) "I'm going onstage, babe," Chariot said. "Is our flying shoggoth in the green?"

"Hrrm..." She checked her console. "Yeah, they're good. You go out there and knock 'em dead, alright?"

"Of course." Chariot gave her their last kiss, a soft peck on the lips, and sped to the backstage. Five minutes to go.

* * *

  
Fifteen rehearsals, three safety checks, and one dry run performed a day ago--all at sub-30% power, the dry run reaching almost 40% to better prepare for how much juice Chariot was going to be channeling--and only at the last minute, literally the last minute, before Chariot began her greatest and most awful performance of all time, did she take a moment, poised there behind the curtains, to realize that the Croix she had fallen in love with was gone.

Too much, too fast. Her joy had bled away. Her manic energy. Her dirty mind. Her endless enthusiasm in weird hobbies that Chariot had no notion about. Croix had shirked it all.

When she swore at Chariot, it was without mirth; not a quotation, not mock disdain, exaggerated anger, but calculated barbs meant to draw blood.

When they slept together--and often that was literal; she had lost most of her drive for lovemaking--she was distracted, itching and irritable, or else silent and staring. Her kisses had a chemical taste; all the caffeine, all the colorful multivitamins she took after a bout of scurvy.

How much of it was Chariot's fault?

So much of it could have been. Chariot had to talk Croix into the Shiny Chariot project, dangling promises of research and fieldwork and flavors of mana and opportunities to research eldritch sorceries and the work of the gods first-hand. And she knew Croix was an obsessive who never looked away or slowed down when she was motivated. And she had an eye for numbers, and a fascination with machines, and Shiny's erupting popularity gave her plenty of both to fiddle with.

Chariot had been enthused to see her girlfriend throw herself headlong into the how of Shiny Chariot. The long nights didn't bother her. They'd spent less and less time together save when they were not on tour; and even so, half their conversations or more were on the subject of budget, timing, locations, experiments, numbers, energies. Necessities, not objects of fascination.  
And on top of all that Croix had lost herself in the makings of the Fuel Spirits. "Not a shoggoth," she'd said. "But it's alright, I think."

What would she have said about the fuel spirits two years ago? Hell, one year ago? She should be flitting through school on a hoverpad made of fuel spirit. She'd be pranking Prof. Allsorts (RIP).

She'd get the spirits to download and play Doom on themselves.

Not an hour ago Croix was joylessly typing commands into her fuel spirits, making them take assorted imaginary forms she had to ask Chariot to conceive. Her expression was flat, her mouth faintly pursed, her voice stony and distant.

She blinked away a tear, wiped it away on her sleeve.

This will be the last... for a while. For a long while. Announce a break from touring. Spend some of the money on accountants; screw the world's-smallest-million-dollar-outfit gimmick. Go on a vacation. Just you and her and nobody else--maybe save a bunch of random internet people to battle in Counter-Strike. She'll rediscover herself and everything will be right.

Believe that everything will be right. A believing heart is your magic, Chairy.

She smiled, and with renewed hope, committed an act of sorcerous cannibalism.

* * *

  
Croix waited. The Dream Fuel Spirits did all the work from here on out, so all she had to do was kill time in the green room, snorting a bump of heroin off a hand mirror. Not a lot; she didn't need or want a lot tonight. But a little took the edge off. (Remember when that much would leave you wasted for hours, Croix? [Shut the fuck up.] Is the truth too much--)

She scratched inside her left sleeve. (Only a few more months and those arms would be haunted by track marks and scars pitifully healed by her lamentable lack of talent with healing magic.) She needed this performance to be fucking over so she could break the news, drink in the awe of Chariot, talk her down if she got nervous--seriously, nobody in the audience was a witch, witches hated her. Why not take what is freely offered? Why not be like the gods themselves, fattened on sacrifice?

(She imagined Gorgo-Mormo kneeling at Chariot's feet, licking her boots with three tongues; she imagined being the soul and voice of a new god. When the last Word unveiled itself, what less would she be? And what would all those smarmy, hidebound bitches feel about themselves then, huh? When Azathoth speaks, witches die; when Shub-Niggurath speaks, witches breed; when Yog-Sothoth speaks, witches vanish. Was magic itself not a power the equal of death, life, and time? It had control over all three; would Chariot not be a greater god yet than the Three Who Created All Things, greater than the tripartite deity that shepherded magic itself?)

She awoke from another doze. A wisp of a dream was in her head: a masked Croix unmasked, livid, screaming at an iron-faced, impassive Chariot.

It was an augury, not that she knew.

Chariot's performance would last another hour.

Croix spent her last hour and ten minutes as Chariot's lover imagining, furtively, how it would be if she could push past her pitiable limits and become her equal.

If she could only be a little more like her.

The affair of Croix and Chariot ended in an hour and ten minutes--an hour and nine, now. But the love Croix felt for Chariot had died, or atrophied beyond rescue, well before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm seriously considering upping the rating from T to M. Any thoughts, people on the internet?


	6. The Passage of Emptiness

Chariot sobbed uncontrollably when the axe's blade stroked the back of her neck. Her executioner rested the blade at the base of her skull, the better to terminate her in a single stroke with less chance for her to issue a death-curse. Her life now depended on the verdict of the Three Little Mothers, the greatest of Mormo's priestesses on Earth, in regards to how she had just shot Mormo with Her greatest artifact.

Against hope, she wished that Croix were here. She didn't want to die hating her; she didn't want to die being hated. (But everyone would hate her, forever, for what she did to their god, her god, in a burst of fury--fury at the world, fury at herself, fury at Mormo for being hateful and impassive.)

The Little Mother of Sighs spoke with passion: "Chariot du Nord has struck the mother of all our mothers. Eternal death is a pittance. She will gaze upon Ghatanotoa and be ankylosed; she will be sealed in our captured Great Race cube to reside the rest of time out of phase. When it runs out of power, she will be the last living thing, persisting all eternity in a universe dead vigintilion to the power of vigintilion years, trapped forever in a time where forever has no meaning and even light has died."

The Little Mother of Tears spoke with irritation: "Chariot du Nord has struck the mother of all our mothers. Elaborate methods of torture are unnecessary and wasteful and rife with the opportunity to be sabotaged. Death is certainly enough; for death is the end and what may persist briefly after death is soon swallowed up by Azathoth, the Nuclear Chaos. Your head will be removed from your neck, your brain liquefied and removed for use as magical reagent, and what remains preserved in a lucite cube to be routinely degraded by those more pious than you."

The Little Mother of Darkness spoke: "She will live."

The other Little Mothers waited for her to elaborate. The executioner snarled; the noise was not human. Chariot waited for some new and terrible proclamation.

The Little Mother of Darkness spoke: "Punishment of this sort is outmoded. She is disarmed; she is clearly petinent; and we are women approaching our fifth century of life acting as though we are barely out of our third. The animal satisfaction of cruelty is passing. If there is holy judgment Mormo will mete it out in time." She regarded Chariot with a head sagging with dozens of blind, tumorous eyes. "Her life is over. Let her die at her own pace."

* * *

Chariot lay low for several years, subsisting off of her residuals from being Shiny Chariot and hating herself.

She realized one day that even though the Shiny Rod had abandoned her, she could no more forget the lessons it taught her than she could forget the skills it had conferred into her (even now she could slice the wing off a fly with a cheap longbow and stainless-steel-barbed arrow). There was only one way to honor the artifact that changed her life.

From there, it took half a year to emerge as Ursula Callistis. She had time, she had the means to plant false attendance records under Professor Allsorts (RIP), who was not around to tell any of the teachers her true identity. Prof. Holbrooke knew, but she was compassionate, as it was seemingly impossible for her not to be. Lukic knew, but she had a betting pool going on how the goddess would inevitably take her revenge.

(She would win it years later during one of the less-eventful Mormo Days in Witch Christmas history--[but that's another tale.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12999303/chapters/30019920))

Her first night in a tiny new-teacher room, with barely enough room for herself and Alcor, she had plenty of time to think about the Shiny Rod and Croix and how going back to Luna Nova was, in its way, an elaborate form of self-harm.

She lay in a stiff bed, looking at her hands, and remembering the weight of the Claiomh Solais; its ancient construction, its weight, the light of it in her hand as it shifted shape into its panoply of mystical weapons and implements. She felt like a small new god when she was in the groove, and--

\--and she wouldn't be in the groove anywhere near as often if Croix had not tutored her on the ins and outs of the Rod.

Chariot being worthy of the Rod conferred certain instinctive skills, but Croix was the one who had worked out the logic of unlocking the Words, and it was her who helped Chariot innovate the usage of the Claiomh Solais beyond its designated functions--

* * *

"We'll know when it's time for us to know," Chariot said, stroking the Claiomh Solais.

"Of course it works like that," Croix said, groaning. "At least there's some logic behind this shit: 'how we gon' teach the childrens?'"

Chariot giggled, and Croix made a few tasteless jokes accompanied by tickles, and they rolled onto Croix's bed and kissed and held each other and felt nothing but joy, nothing but contentment.

Nothing but completion.

They completed each other as surely as a key completes a lock.

* * *

Chariot, who was still learning to be Ursula, turned over in her bed and sobbed into the pillow. Alcor alit on the edge of her bed, and not knowing what else to do preened her long blue hair.

Croix was gone; the Shiny Rod, gone. However much she hated Croix for what she'd done, there had been so much love she'd felt for her, once. The love never really went away. It had been drowned by betrayal, and she'd buried it for fear of falling in love again with the woman who ruined her life. But here and now that love raised its bloodied head and she could only think of when she had been whole.

Powerful, divine, chosen. The armaments of a god in one hand, her beloved's hand in the other. They would make the world a better place, a happier place.

[Stupid girl.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98bF7JUUj3E)

She fell asleep, in time. She dreamed about being a child again, breaking her leg in the wilderness, and dying alone.

This is the sorrow of Chariot du Nord.

* * *

Croix was spending this week in a shitty hotel that had aspirations of being fancy. It was called the Edelweiss and it had a serious ant problem. She put up some wards, sealed her room from the outside with padding and extra curtains, and continued work on the Sorcery Solution System.

She lost herself in her work. She consulted a laptop that used to play video games--it had seen hours of her and Chariot's smiling faces--and at present was calculating the energy efficiency of turning a particular unit of sadness (a child's heartsick despair over a pet kitten dying) into mana. Sadness was not the most energy-efficient for how inward it was and how complex it could be, diluting the emotion and necessitating purification that spat out less energy than desirable.

Of course, much of the Noire Rod's energy at this early stage--it was a zygote of an artifact, a proof of concept for a true shoggoth-matter weapon--came from her despair. She had it in abundance and there was no transmission loss for distance.

When she was tired--she realized it had been nearly twenty hours since she'd locked herself in, performing hundreds of bug tests and programming tests and sending the little fuckers out to taste strong negative emotion and waiting. She hadn't eaten; she was out of ramen and thus out of food. She would have to go out and get food eventually--maybe splurge on that Pizza Hut she saw on the map about a mile down the road.

Not now, though.

She had The Junk.

The Junk was better than food.

She lay on her bed, tied off her arm, and shot the fuck up. She watched her blood bloom into her hypo; she'd hit the vein on the first try, hot damn. She injected, tossed the needle aside, untied her arm, and muttered a healing spell. The Fuel Spirit formed a wand and green light sprinkled onto the softly bleeding wound.

In less than ten seconds it hit her brain and she slipped into the darkness.

In the darkness, she didn't always dream. When she didn't dream, it was good.

She dreamed.

About Chariot.

Goddammit.

* * *

In the dream, Croix bore the Shiny Rod. Chariot asked: what are you going to do with it?

This, Croix said, and killed her, the Rod a world-cleaving sword that cut Chariot in half. "Why?" she said, from one mouth now two.

"In my way," Croix said, and she spoke the seventh Word, which was not the Seventh Word but a gurgling length of Aklo which meant "in all ways may I die and pass from the Earth."

The world burned and Croix burned and Chariot's eyes were wet with tears, abundant with love, and Croix knew, knew, that if she had just given it back, let the universe return to order, that Chariot would have brought a new age of love and beauty and she would be safe and she wouldn't wake up sick and wouldn't hate herself.

And it was too late because Croix knew more than she did and in her infinite knowledge burned the world away.

* * *

Croix woke to the distinct sensation of ants crawling on her face.

The dream left her within a few minutes of washing the smashed bugs from her face in the sink. It had been twelve hours since she went to bed and getting out of bed was an effort; the splash of water on her lips tasted almost as good as a lack of the DT's. Alright, she thought, let's feed myself.

She sent the Fuel Spirits for ramen. She slumped into the bed and remembered Chariot.

Beautiful. Wise. Kind. Loving.

The opposite of Croix in every way. She was glad the bitch was almost certainly dead. She took delight in imagining her being tortured to death by some horror of Y'Golonac's, ruining her beauty and power and leaving her nothing but dead and in agony--

Tears stung her cheeks. She wept, silent, her throat wracked with each spasm of her voice box.

_Don't be dead. Please don't be dead. Please be there Chariot. Please be alive and please have found someone better than me._

_So I can kill them and make you love me again._

_So that when I own this world I will own you too._

_So I can hear you laugh at my stupid jokes again._

_So I can fall asleep without needing the drugs and wake up feeling like a person and not a scaffolding for pain and hunger and hate._

_Kill me. Fucking kill me._

Within the hour the fuel spirits returned, filled and activated the coffee boiler. She ate spicy chicken ramen--eight bags for a dollar--and pushed the human part of herself out of her mind and became the engine of math and engineering.

[She would dance this dance for nearly a decade.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytH7SLznGzE)

This is the pain of Croix Merides.


	7. --then my dreams might let me know--

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 7 (Open): RECONCILIATION

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Love.  
> Let's talk about love.  
> Is it anything and everything you ever hoped for?  
> Or do the feeling haunt you?  
> \--I know the feeling haunt you--

The Noir Rod was dead, and the Earth was alive, and so was Chariot, and so was Croix.

The world was united, however briefly, in an ecstasy of triumph, and however briefly, Chariot and Croix were alone.

"Well," Croix said, "it was nice being saved for a few minutes."

Chariot looked at her. It wasn't a stare; her eyes wandered up and down her body, from her exhausted face to her gnarled hands to the stretch of well-abused arm-skin exposed by a torn sleeve.

"Nothing?" Croix said. "No 'I told you so?' No 'I'm gonna kill you myself?'" She shrugged. "I'd be alright with dying now. I've earned it."

Chariot held out her hand.

Croix definitely and unquestionably stared at that offered hand, unsure of what to do.

"I won't bite you," Chariot said.

"Even if I ask?"

"Please, Croix."

Expecting a broken arm at the very least, Croix took her hand.

Her hand was soft, but textured. She squeezed her hand, just so, less a handshake, more than just the simple act of applied pressure. She turned her arm over, and so did Croix's, and in the light of the sun--which felt new and fresh as the spring, months ahead of schedule--saw the scars, the track marks.

"How long?" Chariot said.

"Injecting? About... six years." She looked away. "I've been using since... well, we were touring... I think... since Berlin, the first time."

"...Was I just that blind?" Chariot said.

"You were... optimistic. About everything. Even me. And you saw where that got us both." Croix stared intently at nothing. "Well. I've done unforgivable things. They're going to execute me--or someone's going to execute me for them."

"The Little Mothers?" Chariot said. "They let me go with a warning. I'm pretty sure nuclear fire is a sacrament to Azathoth... they may even make you a patron saint."

"See?" Croix said, disbelieving the smile on her face. "At the very least they're not gonna count me with the New Nine. Maybe they'll replace me with... who're those bitches? With the red hair and the... you know the ones, right?"

"Not this bitch with the red hair?" Chariot said, smiling back.

"Oh, come on. You've been beating yourself up over something I made you do. You're a saint. I'm just..."

In the second she hesitated, trying to find the word that best described how much she hated herself, Chariot leaned close and kissed her. It was more than their last kiss; there was some pressure behind it, there was loving intent. It was not their most passionate, not their most fierce. It was tinged with hesitation; with fear of regret.

And even so Croix was young again. She wasn't addicted. She wasn't in perpetual agony. She wasn't a criminal against humanity. She was young and stupid and in love with a beautiful woman and she was--

\--she was loved.

She didn't deserve it. Any of it.

[But she was loved.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0YkNFUEomE)

Trembling, she fell into Chariot's arms, and for an endless length of time they wept into each other's shoulders. Chariot was stoic, firm, and Croix trembled like a kicked dog and bawled an endless stream of apologies into her beloved's nape.

"Why?" Croix said. "You stupid bitch, you should've let me die."

"You could've let us die," Chariot said. "You had the chance."

"I... I tried to kill you, too. Again and again."

"...true. But when you had the choice to let us die, you saved us."

"Thousand masks, Chariot, I'm a piece of shit. I'm strung out, I just... I nearly killed us all. I--fuck, you were right. I made a shoggoth and it fucking turned on me the second I lost control and it... and it... fuck, you were right."

"I should've known you were in pain," Chariot said. "I should've listened to you more. I shouldn't have made us move so fast. If... if I had cared more... none of this would've happened."  
"Sure. But I never had to pull any of those triggers I pulled. I'm the monster here, not you."

"We're both monsters, in our ways. We just..." She squeezed Croix tight. "There's not an easy answer here, is there? We're both..."

"...'like refugees,'" Croix said, almost singing. "'We're lost, like refugees.'"

"That's... you're doing a voice. What are you referencing?"

Croix's face fell. "Green Day."

"Oh... they're good. I like them."  
"Oh thank fuck I've been keeping that under my hat for fifteen fucking years and I have never breathed a word of it to anyone because I'll be kicked out for being a huge fucking poseur and now it's like, fuck, why not just throw another--just--" She babbled a few more nonsense words, tears streaming down her ruddy face.

"Mother Mormo," Chariot said, "that's the woman I fell in love with."

"...f-fuck. You're..." Croix sobbed. "You were always the woman I fell in love with."

There was little else to be said.

When the Wild Hunt came--and it did come, armed and ready to deliver Croix before the Little Mothers--Croix said the last words she would speak in that clearing. They were not, though, the last words she would ever say to Chariot.

"Was it worth it?" Croix said.

"Every last moment," Chariot said.

* * *

Croix and Chariot have spoken since, of course; it was nearly two months before Croix began her Mother-mandated exile to seek a cure for Wagandea poisoning.

I cannot say here if they renewed their love. Perhaps they have; perhaps the new absence nurtures a growing and intense affection. Perhaps they formalized the end of their relationship, not on a note of spite and horror but of a mutual but faded love and the wisdom of years.

Perhaps, like so much in life, nothing was ended and nothing begun, but something, the story of Croix Merides and Chariot du Nord, continued, as it continues, as Croix took her lonesome vigil and Chariot returned to Luna Nova to pass on the wisdom of the Shiny Rod.

There are more stories I have to tell; how Croix came to Chariot begging for help to escape the devil Heroin, how the two stole aboard the Princess Cruiser to their mutual regret, how, elsewhere, Croix brought the hammer of SIVA down on a helpless Earth and what Chariot (and Akko of course) did in response.

But those are for another day. Here and now I can say this:

If only for a day,[ Chariot and Croix fell in love again.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdXsLt0o_9g)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did it all 'cause it feel good  
> I wouldn't do it all if it feel bad  
> Better live your life  
> We were running out of time.


End file.
